Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: Michael Medved
By Zach Marks, Yale University
Friday July 6, 2007
You know how when you go to the movies there’s always some guy a few rows behind you whose snide remarks prevent anyone from enjoying the film? Michael Medved is that guy, only instead of just annoying the people around him, the conservative critic uses a daily radio show to flood the airwaves with his right-wing commentary.
In the 1980s, Medved became a familiar face to millions of Americans who watched the weekly movie review show “Sneak Previews,” which he co-hosted for 12 years. But he gained notoriety in 1992 when he published the book Hollywood vs. America, in which he asserted that “Hollywood ignores—and assaults—the values of ordinary American families.” Medved continued to rail against “the Hollywood liberal elite” as chief film critic for the New York Post.
Medved’s big break came when Rush Limbaugh featured an interview with him in the Limbaugh Letter newsletter, and then asked him to co-host an episode of “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” Medved felt right at home and returned to Limbaugh’s show more than two dozen times. Sensing there was a market for Medved’s brand of demagoguery, the Seattle-based radio station 770 KTTH “The Truth” offered him his own show in 1996. Medved jumped at the chance to join the corporate talk radio powerhouse, whose parent company claims its “shows are diverse as well as the topics.” And indeed the station’s hosts represent a diverse range on the ideological spectrum—from the very right-wing Bill O’Reilly to the really right-wing Michael Savage.
“The Truth” gave Medved the time slot immediately following Limbaugh’s, and the same listeners who appreciated the man who coined the term “feminazi” stuck around to hear Medved argue that television makes people gay and causes abortions. Eleven years later, “The Michael Medved Show” is now carried by nearly 200 stations across the nation, delivering three hours of the Mustachioed Madman’s right-wing propaganda to more than 2.5 million listeners five days a week.
While Medved still takes time to expose “the Hollywood left’s” hidden agenda to “attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism,” he now provides his expert analysis on issues beyond the entertainment industry, such as the Iraq war. In an article refuting arguments against invading Iraq, Medved insisted that by waging war in Iraq the United States would not “enrage the Arab world” or “suffer appalling losses,” and he forecasted the Middle East would “benefit from a sweeping U.S. victory.” You can blame Medved’s short-sightedness on his belief that “America isn’t normal—it’s bizarrely blessed,” which apparently gives the United States the right to invade countries if our desire to drive Hummers makes it necessary. Responding to arguments that the war was “all about oil,” Medved scoffed, “so what?”
In the same article, Medved suggested that critics of the Bush administration would prefer “a bloody American defeat” over “a swift, relatively painless U.S. victory.” This view of progressives as inherently self-destructive surfaces consistently in Medved’s rhetoric. “Liberals love losing because it makes them feel virtuous,” writes Medved, who claims to be the inspiration for the most virtuous of all cartoon characters, Ned Flanders of “The Simpsons,” to whom Medved bears a striking resemblance, except that he’s an observant Jew and Flanders is deeply Christian.
But don’t get Medved started on cartoons. Where most movie viewers saw “Happy Feet” as a cute film about a dancing penguin, Medved saw “the darkest, most disturbing feature length animated film ever offered by a major studio.” He derided the film as “pro-environmental” propaganda with “a bizarre anti-religious bias” and “a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity.”
And it’s not just animated penguins that are turning America into a godless nation, according to Medved. Every few months or so he picks a new film to condemn as the left’s next attempt to destroy American values. Along with “the usual gang of ayatollahs,” as New York Times columnist Frank Rich characterizes Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, Medved charged that “Million Dollar Baby” was an unacceptable, subversive endorsement of euthanasia. Saying that “hate is not too strong a word” to describe his opinion of the Clint Eastwood film, Medved made the talk show rounds on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and “The 700 Club” not simply to bad mouth it, but to give away the essential plot twist and spoil the ending in an attempt to scare off potential moviegoers.
When “Million Dollar Baby” received seven Academy Award nominations and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”—which was denounced as anti-Semitic by many prominent Jewish groups and received mixed reviews from critics—was not nominated for any high-profile Oscars, Medved cited it as evidence of the film industry’s “almost pathological discomfort” with religion. But this was to be expected from Medved, who rushed to Gibson’s defense even when he went on a hateful tirade against Jews. “Michael Moore has done far more damage to the Jewish community, particularly regarding the issue of Israel, than anything Mel Gibson has ever done,” Medved insisted.
This wasn’t the only time Medved raised eyebrows with his religious commentary. After President Bush invited Medved and several other conservative talk show hosts to the White House in September 2006, Medved revealed that “the subject of my conversation with the president” was that “there are problems with Islam, as a faith, as a culture, as a vision of civilization.” There is “a violence problem in the Muslim world because that is an inherent problem in Islam,” Medved charged. “A core foundational difference between Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, if you will, even Hinduism and Islam,” is that Islam is “a primitive religion.” Powerful words from a guy who claims, “Talk radio is a source of hope, not hatred.”
Medved’s radio show isn’t the only forum through which he shares his thoughts. He writes a weekly column for Townhall.com, whose slogan is “Where Your Opinion Counts,” although the tagline should continue “As Long as You’re a Conservative.” Indeed, sharing space on the site with the likes of Ann Coulter makes Medved look moderate, though his columns have been far from it. When Tim Hardaway said “I hate gay people” and explained that he would ignore a gay family member, Medved rushed to his defense, likening gay men to “morbidly obese women” and suggesting that if NBA teams welcome gay men, WNBA players might as well let straight men in their locker room showers with them.
Medved hasn’t always been a rabid right-winger. At Yale Law School he served as co-chair of the Vietnam Moratorium anti-war demonstration. He left Yale Law after a year to be the head speechwriter for a Democrat running for U.S. Senate, and later served, according to Medved’s website, as a “consultant for a variety of liberal candidates and office-holders,” including Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA), whom Medved now refers to as a “Stalinist Democrat.”
In his 2005 book Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons, Medved chronicles his conversion to rabid right-winger. He completed his metamorphosis while interviewing White House chiefs of staff for his 1979 book The Shadow Presidents: The Secret History of the Chief Executives and Their Top Aides. These interviews led to a lasting friendship between Medved and President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, Dick Cheney. When Cheney was back in the White House with another job decades later, Medved borrowed talking points from his old friend and insisted there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda even after the Bush administration stopped making such claims.
But before you go taking out your progressive passion on Medved, you should know he’s already being attacked from the right for not being conservative enough. During an interview with John Moe, Medved said he wasn’t a fan of Fox News, called right-wing talking head Michael Savage “an embarrassment to the human race,” and revealed that he listens to National Public Radio everyday. (Never mind that Medved has referred to NPR on his show as “National People’s Radio,” suggesting a communist bias at the station.) Conservative blogger Brian Mahoney suggested Medved might be “an ideological faker” and asked, “Is syndicated talk host Michael Medved really a closet lefty?”
Judging from a June 2007 interview on CNN in which Medved claimed there was “disproportionate sympathy for liberal causes and candidates in mainstream media” four days after a well-publicized report proved otherwise, the likely answer is no.
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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Comments
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Just like several Bush administration members, ie. Rove, Libby, Melman, who ran a successful anti gay campaign while being gay themselves – (they’ve been spotted picking up young men at a known gay bar in Washington, or as in the case of “iournalist” Jeff Gannon actually ordering one in), methinks the effeminate Medved doth protest waaay too much with his anti gay message.
— james royce - Jul 7, 02:48 PM - #I was in quite a few classes with Mike at Dana Jr. High School in San Diego. I’m always interested to hear about him. Back then he was known as the smartest kid in our school. He was very interested in current events and politics and a strong supporter of JFK.
— M. E. - Jul 13, 10:58 AM - #Medved is another indication of our precipitous plunge into materialism no matter who or what it hurts. Medved does it all for money. He doesn’t care that the hate and lies he dispenses has resulted in our killing at least 655,000 Iraqis and counting. Judaism is supposed to respect human life. He’s certainly no observant Jew!!
— Nelson L - Jul 13, 11:25 AM - #It is nice to know Medved’s “...already being attacked from the right for not being conservative enough.”
When the NeoCons attack him, he will be lucky to escape with his testicles (if he has any).
What will probably save Meved is his “bed-buddy relationship” with the president-in-charge-of-Vice, SiCKO DiCKO. Even the most psychopathic NeoCon idiot (Limbaugh, Coulter, et. al.) can’t compare with SiCKO DiCKO for viciousness!
— hterrya - Jul 13, 03:39 PM - #The most hilarious claim Medved has made was that if you say you love your country, but wish to change a few things, it was like saying your wife is fine, but she ought to lose weight. Insightful, or claptrap—you decide.
— Tim Barton - Jul 31, 02:43 AM - #Is this the Medved that was an undergraduate at Yale in 1968?
— Joe - Aug 2, 11:24 AM - #Medved can, with success argue any point in his favor. He does this with studies, surveys, and polls…If a particular poll or survey will support his argument he champions the source…if the left attempts to use a poll or survey, Medved will attack the source . His sources are always legitimate, and his method of delivery is structured to prop up his point. He asks his callers carefully structured questions that are delivered in such a way as to support his argument.
Fall for his bait and you cannot win the argument. an example of arguments he carefully structures is Immigration and the North American Union. With respect to Immigration Medved supports the idea that it would be impossible to Mass deport illegals, because we couldn’t possibly catch them all.
A true statement, however we cannot catch all of the speeders and red light runners either so should we not attempt to enforce traffic laws?
He is adamant about the fact that there is no North American Union being supported by the government
This is also correct. But who really believes that every project is thought out in its entirety, trotted out before congress to be debated and funded?. back in 1934, was the use of social security number system thought out and debated, to the degree that it is used now?. Certainly not.
Just because there is no federal funding to support a north American union does not mean it does not receive peripheral federal dollars. Medved claims a north American union has no supporters. I beg to differ. And I dispute the claim that it is not being funded or actively pursued albeit private money at this point, the feds will get on board “officially” when they find they can no longer resist the overwhelming facts that goods will be travelling unrestricted through the country..it’s just a matter of time
Medveds melodramatics on the air, coupled with his name calling of people like“stupid”, “idiot”, and “moron” is just entertainment. he claims he calls people names to “make a point” ( in my humble opinion his point being made is he is a jerk ) and should never be taken seriously, after all it is called “the Michael Medved SHOW” meaning ratings, sold advertising and in general mere entertainment that is, in my opinion hardly worthy of being taken seriously.
— Larry - Sep 1, 08:45 AM - #Michael Medved is one of the best in conservative talk radio. “Progressives” should be annoyed by him. He’s smart, effective, and quite well-read. Part of what makes his program so “entertaining”, is that he is good at debate, has facts and stats at the ready, and takes on callers on a regular basis. It makes for a good program, whether you disagree or agree with him.
— wordsmith - Sep 2, 09:18 PM - #Are you kidding? The man is brilliant! Take your blinders off and really listen to what he has to say. I’m a fan and I can tell you that the article above is totally skewed!
— Chrisy - Nov 7, 10:33 PM - #Michael Medved is the most well read , Limbaugh the most entertaining and Dennis Prager the most logical of ALL Talk Radio Hosts!
— pea - Jan 22, 03:09 PM - #i agree with larry, medved takes on and defends liberal positions. he skews questions and berates callers. i don’t take him serious on key conseratives issues.
— paul of san diego - Feb 4, 11:56 AM - #“Is syndicated talk host Michael Medved really a closet lefty?”
Closeted? I believe so.
Lefty? No.
He’s obviously a very smart guy but I think he must be a self-hating conservative: he has to nod along with his intellectually- and culturally-challenged constituents and and their mouth-breathing rants so he can push ahead his pet positions. He should take his act on the road to the incest belt and really meet his snake-handling listeners on their turf; better put a gun rack in the Volvo first.
He’s like the country club republicans who shudder while cheering for Mrs. Palin and her daughter’s teenage breeding partner: “Jeez, just how low will I stoop for capital gains and estate tax cuts?”
— Mike Sullivan - Sep 5, 05:15 PM - #